Snowden Used Cheap Software to Plunder NSA Data

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Dima007

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Edward Snowden used widely available automated software to steal classified data from the National Security Agency’s networks, intelligence officials have determined, raising questions about the security of other top-secret military and intelligence systems under the NSA’s purview.

The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that the former NSA contractor used a Web crawler, cheap software designed to index and back up websites, to scour the NSA’s data and return a trove of confidential documents. Snowden apparently programmed his search to find particular subjects and determine how deeply to follow links on the NSA’s internal networks.

Investigators found that Snowden’s method of obtaining the data was hardly sophisticated and should have been easily detected. Snowden accessed roughly 1.7 million files, intelligence officials said last week, partly because the NSA “compartmented” relatively little information, making it easier for a Web crawler like the one Snowden used to access a large number of files.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2014/02/09/snowden-nsa-cheap-software/#ixzz2svXl14ui
 
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Prorootect

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Intelligence officials investigating how Edward J. Snowden gained access to a huge trove of the country’s most highly classified documents say they have determined that he used inexpensive and widely available software to “scrape” the National Security Agency’s networks, and kept at it even after he was briefly challenged by agency officials.
Using “web crawler” software designed to search, index and back up a website, Mr. Snowden “scraped data out of our systems” while he went about his day job, according to a senior intelligence official. “We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence,” the official said. The process, he added, was “quite automated.”
The findings are striking because the N.S.A.’s mission includes protecting the nation’s most sensitive military and intelligence computer systems from cyberattacks, especially the sophisticated attacks that emanate from Russia and China. Mr. Snowden’s “insider attack,” by contrast, was hardly sophisticated and should have been easily detected, investigators found.

Officials say Mr. Snowden used “web crawler” software. Channel 4/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Moreover, Mr. Snowden succeeded nearly three years after the WikiLeaks disclosures, in which military and State Department files, of far less sensitivity, were taken using similar techniques.
NYTimes.com : Snowden Used Low-Cost Tool to Best N.S.A. : http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/us/snowden-used-low-cost-tool-to-best-nsa.html?ref=us&_r=1
 
D

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i can see here a brilliant conspiracy from the Nazi Space Aliens; Snowden is in fact an active agent , and all this drama is just a trap to convince foreign agencies ( chinese, iranian and russian ones especially) that they are weak and let them trying to penetrate NSA networks , by then NSAs hackers can trace back the attackers' network and infiltrate and infect them with nanoviruses coming from zone 51 ; then NSA will create their own government and rule the world !!!!! muhahahahahaha

what? me Paranoid , Hell no !
 
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